← Back to blog

How to Retain OTT Subscribers: 5 Practical Tips

Learn how to retain OTT subscribers with practical steps for billing recovery, user experience, pricing, content planning and engagement.

Quick answer: how to retain OTT subscribers

OTT subscriber retention is not one feature or campaign. It starts with a reliable subscription journey, a usable experience on every relevant device, a clear content plan and engagement signals that help a team decide what to improve next. The five areas below are a practical review checklist before changing an OTT retention strategy.

For the technical foundations behind that work, see what an OTT platform is, the key metrics to review and the stages of the OTT user journey.

Five areas to review before changing an OTT retention strategy

The rate at which people cancel their subscription to your service is a direct reflection of the value they see in it. If you want to show that your brand is worth it, you must encourage and facilitate subscriber retention. Here are five tips to help you do just that.

1.Address Involuntary Cancellations

Accidentally failed payments are the main cause of involuntary cancellations. Your clients want to pay for and continue to use your service, but they bump into a problem while paying.

The easiest way to reduce complications is to work with an automated invoicing service. It will alert users whenever they need to update their registered form of payment or look into any issues in order to keep their subscription from being cancelled.

2. Revamp and Improve Look and Feel

The two main catalysts for a successful OTT app are user interface and user experience. In order to keep users hooked, visuals need to be attractive on all devices.

If your app doesn’t look or work the right way, users will spend less time interacting with it. Low levels of interaction are one of the best indicators for a bad user experience, which will eventually lead to a cancelled subscription.

3.Be Strategic About Pricing

Don’t just settle on the first price model that comes to mind. Continuously analyze competitors, compare prices, and make sure that you are providing the best possible value to your clients. Afterwards, you can share that data with you subscribers!

You should always focus on properly communicating the value your app brings to your subscribers. Push notifications via email and in the app can help with that. You should also make it an important aspect of your marketing strategy.

4.Add New Content Periodically

If subscribers feel that they’ve used up all of the content options you have available, they will be tempted to abandon your service to experiment with another one. Offering new, appealing content regularly is one of the best way to keep your clients committed.

5.Focus on Engagement

It’s not enough to just get new subscribers. As soon as they sign up, it’s up to you to keep them engaged. The data collected from viewers will provide key information that can be used to keep them hooked.

A high rate of cancelled subscriptions (more than 5%) is a problem for OTT brands that are hoping to get a higher share of the market, regardless of how good their content library is. In Fractal Media we highly recommend you to follow these tips in order to have more success with subscriber retention and save yourself the cost of having to replace lost clients.

Remember that the best way to guarantee satisfied users is to design an app that they love to use. Take the time and invest in an excellent user experience for all platforms and devices. It’s the best investment you can make.

## A practical next step for OTT teams

Before changing pricing, content or product features, map where cancellations happen and which signals are available: failed payments, device-specific friction, content usage and engagement. This makes it easier to choose one retention action to test rather than treating all cancellations as the same problem.

If you are planning a platform review, contact Fractal Media to discuss the technical and operational scope.